The present invention relates to a method of teaching reading skills and in particular to a computer based method involving a balanced approach to such instructions.
Considerable effort has been devoted, in the past number of years, into developing methods for teaching students how to read. Unfortunately, most of the conventional methods, including known computer based methods, focus on a single technique for teaching all readers, ignoring the fact that each student has different strengths and weaknesses.
Research by experts in the field and, in particular that of Dr. Christina Fiedorowicz and Dr. Ronald Trites, has demonstrated the need for a balanced approach to reading instruction. This balanced approach involves providing all of the basic skills necessary to develop effective reading skills, and is normally divided into three different program components: phonemic awareness, reading subskills, and reading comprehension.
Phonemic awareness is the understanding that speech is composed of a series of individual speech sounds called phonemes, and to read successfully words are broken down into sounds, for example the word xe2x80x9ccatxe2x80x9d is broken down into separate phoneme -/k/, /a/, and /t/.
Reading subskills incorporate several concepts including automaticity and reading subtypes. A task analytic approach is used to deliver both the assessment and intervention requirements to remediate students with reading disabilities or those wishing to accelerate skill development. This overall approach creates a structural and sequential methodology for effectively addressing poor decoding and component reading skills that ultimately leads to improvements in reading comprehension.
The final phase of the training involves reading comprehension, which challenges the students to use the skills learned in the two previous phases in comprehension exercises.
However, the implementation of such a balanced reading program comes at a cost. For most teachers, assigning and modifying training of a small group of students is manageable. The proliferation of computers and an increased awareness of students with reading difficulties make the small group environment much less commonplace.
Typically, this new atmosphere requires educators to sacrifice program efficiency in order to accommodate more students. In order to maintain the efficacy of a balanced approach to reading instruction in a computer lab with 20 or more workstations, the teacher""s role as technical, and pedagogical administrator must be significantly re-aligned. If it is not, teachers run the risk of providing incomplete, unbalanced and inconsistent instruction.
The more basic principles of teaching reading skills have been known for some time. However, the most effective way of implementing these principles into a classroom or computer laboratory setting, so that a large number of students at a variety of different reading levels can reap the full benefit of these principles, is still under study.
One of the earlier computer based programs which relies on teacher input was developed by the present Assignee and provides a reading program based primarily upon the identification of three reading sub-types of students who were experiencing reading difficulties. The three sub-types are, Type O (oral reading), Type A (intermodal-associative deficit), and Type S (sequential deficit). The program improves the rapid automatic responses of the student to the training stimuli which are broken down in a particular way to train students who belong to the different sub-types. For more information relating to this earlier program reference may be made to the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law delivered by the United States District Court For The District Of New Mexico under court docket No. 91-960-M Civil, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference.
The present invention provides, in a first aspect, a computer based method of teaching reading skills to a student comprising the steps of determining which one of a series of predetermined training streams is appropriate for the student, based on the student""s grade level; providing a series of phonemic awareness exercises; providing a series of reading subskill exercises providing a series of reading comprehension exercises; running on a computer the appropriate training stream, which includes: alternating between at least one phonemic awareness exercise and at least one reading subskill exercise until all of the phonemic awareness exercises are mastered; alternating between at least one reading subskill, exercise and at least one reading comprehension exercise until all of the reading subskill exercises are mastered; and mastering remaining reading comprehension exercises; wherein a pre-determined level of mastery must be achieved on each exercise before proceeding to the next exercise.
In another aspect, the present invention provides a computer-based method of teaching reading skills to a student comprising the steps of: determining which one of a series of predetermined training streams is appropriate for the student, based on the student""s grade level compared to the student""s reading level as determined by a Cloze paragraph test; providing a series of phonemic awareness exercises; providing a series of reading subskill exercises; providing a series of reading comprehension exercises; running on a computer the appropriate training stream, which includes: alternating between at least one phonemic awareness exercise and at least one reading subskill exercise until all of the phonemic awareness exercises are mastered; alternating between at least one reading subskill exercise and at least one reading comprehension exercise until all of the reading subskill exercises are mastered; and mastering remaining reading comprehension exercises; wherein a pre-determined level of mastery must be achieved on each exercise before proceeding to the next exercise; when the student""s reading level is two or more levels below the student""s grade level.
In yet another aspect, the present invention provides a computer based method of teaching reading skills to a student comprising the steps of: determining which one of a series of predetermined training steams is appropriate for the student, based on the student""s grade level compared to the student""s reading level as determined by a Cloze paragraph test; providing a series of reading subskill exercises; providing a series of reading comprehension exercises; running on a computer the appropriate training stream, which includes: alternating between at least one subskill exercise and at least one reading comprehension exercise until all of the subskill exercises are mastered; and mastering remaining reading comprehension exercises; wherein a pre-determined level of mastery must be achieved on each exercise before proceeding to the next exercise; when the student""s reading level is one level below, equal to, or greater than the student""s grade level.